


Chill as Cold as Death

by The Chronicler (AgentFrostbite)



Series: Hurting is Part of Healing [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with happy ending to come later, Betrayal, Canon is my toy and I chose to play with it today, End of CW fight, Except there's not a fist fight, F/M, Female Tony Stark, I don't take sides in CW so no-one is favored here, JARVIS is Toni's rock/common sense, JARVIS is still alive, Maybe more than a little mild language, No-one kills my AI son, Not Canon Compliant, Poor Bucky is stuck in the middle, Steve did NOT handle things well, Toni ISN'T handling things well, Toni's POV, fem!tony/steve, not in this one tho, semi canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23162932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentFrostbite/pseuds/The%20Chronicler
Summary: Toni's watching the footage, she knows that road. She knows what's supposed to happen, and she's devastated when that's not what happens.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Hurting is Part of Healing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695832
Comments: 7
Kudos: 164





	Chill as Cold as Death

**Author's Note:**

> Well, 2020's on a wild ride so far. I...got nothing else to say about it, except stay safe/healthy and I hope this brings...enjoyment? Idk, it's kind of a sad fic, tbh.
> 
> Okay, so I'm pretty sure we all know the story by now. I saw a really good piece of genderbend fanart, and I started toying around with that idea, and THEN I saw a really good piece of ship fanart with the genderbend, and _THEN_ my muse was like "THAT, YES, WE WANTS TO WRITE THAT!" cue gremlin Gollum shipper muse, yadda yadda yadda.
> 
> Of course, it started out happy, and then I thought about the CW scene from the movie that I still haven't watched because #denial and I wear #denial like a badge of freaking honor. (I saw The Scene on YT and my muse started bouncing off the wall) So here we are, with a ship and a sad scene and I do have a sequel to this but not a series finish, but YOU KNOW WHAT? I just wanna POST SOMETHING!! FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!! So HERE YOU GO, please enjoy the vestiges of whatever sanity I was able to scrape together on this rollercoaster ride of sadness.

She feels like she’s drowning. Only, drowning and all the nightmares and panic it brings would be a much preferable fate. She’d walk her own self back into that godforsaken Afghanistan cave and stick her own head under the water if it meant she didn’t have to stand there and watch it happen.

It wasn’t an accident.

Somewhere to her left stands the man she was only just starting to trust, Steve’s best friend since pretty much forever, the source of nightmares and pity and empathy, and he’s ramrod rigid, watching the same tape she is, hearing the same sounds, and having a much different experience.

It _wasn’t_ an accident.

There’s a car, and there’s a tree, and the tree stands dented, but the car has been smashed, run straight off the road by something the camera doesn't show...yet. The thing that zips past the car, a blur in the background, circles back around and parks. Someone gets off. It’s a motorcycle. The car was deliberately run off the road.

It _wasn’t_ an _accident_.

Howard crawls from the wreckage, feebly calling to the man he doesn't look at, begging him to “Help my wife.” Howard...who shouted at Maria and berated everyone that defended Toni or told him there wasn’t a way to save Steve or just that he couldn’t do something. Howard, the man who never told Toni he loved her, who was only nice to Maria when Toni wasn’t supposed to be around to see, who hid behind a shell of a smile and thick walls of bitterness. Howard, who’s about to die and is thinking only of his wife. Selfless.

_It wasn’t an accident._

And then he’s dead. But not before calling out his killer, without a mask for once, who beats Howard’s face in with a _metal fist_. Maria’s calling to him, disoriented but still somehow aware. She watches Barnes put Howard back in the car, face-down on the wheel, and though the feed is grainy, Toni _knows_ in her bones, with her soul, in the _depths_ of her Carbonell side that gives her the empathy she has, that was her mother’s resignation position. Maria knew what was about to happen. That’s why she didn’t fight as Barnes squeezed the life out of her with his human hand.

“It wasn’t an accident.” Her voice is as dead as her parents.

Barnes shoots the camera. There’s no mistaking that it’s him. Steve hasn’t moved through the whole thing, except to shift his weight to his back, left foot. He’s leaning away. Barnes is standing there, frozen by guilt and memory and while still aware of what’s going on, obviously not planning on doing anything defensive if Toni were to turn and fire on him or punch him - which no small part of her wants to. The lucky thing for Barnes is that 1) the part that wants to sink to her knees and die is stronger than the part that wants revenge and 2) the part that has recognized her to-be-fiancé’s body language and is going to ask a question that she doesn't really want answered, that part’s currently in the driver’s seat.

“You knew.” She turns on her heel, her brown eyes boring into his blue ones. He says nothing. He doesn't need to. “You son of a _bitch_ , you _knew_!” She takes a threatening step toward him, and he doesn't step back. He’s not here to placate, to apologize, to make amends or concessions. No, everything about his shoulders, his arms, his eyes screams that he’s ready to fight her.

For Barnes. For his best friend. For her parents’ murderer.

There’s a step behind her, but no _click_ of a rifle, so Barnes isn’t going to try to shoot her yet. “I’m sorry,” he says. Like that makes it better.

“Bullshit,” she accuses. “Don’t you lie to me. Don’t you _dare_ lie to me. _Nothing_ about you says sorry,” she hisses. He says nothing else. Neither does Barnes. She steps back, her mind whirling, her blood boiling, her hands closing into fists. “Disengage the suit.”

“Miss, I cannot advise you-” JARVIS starts. She can hear the concern in his voice.

“I don’t give a damn,” Toni spits, knowing she’s hurting him, hurting Steve, hurting herself. She doesn't care. She stares Zemo in the eye. He’s smiling delightedly, going all-in on the villain thing. “Dis. Engage. The suit. Or I’ll tear it off myself.” JARVIS unleashes the latches, and then stops. “JARVIS, I will deactivate you.”

“Toni-” Steve starts. Now he steps toward her, but she backs away, aiming a repulsor at him. Barnes moves in a step.

“You don’t talk to me,” she threatens, voice low and dark, and _this_ is why she needs out of the suit. Her go-to, best working impulse control is to remove the ability to do major damage. “You don’t say a damn word to me, Rogers, or I _will_ shoot you.” JARVIS probably wouldn’t let the command go through.

She pops the emergency release hatch, the one JARVIS doesn't have control of, and the suit front opens. She’s crying. She knows she is. She blinks back the tears, forcing herself to see through the blur.

“Miss-” JARVIS tries again. Now she can hear desperation. She _hates_ hearing desperation from him, hates the situation she’s been put in, hates Zemo, hates her father, hates herself. There’s _so much hate_ that it’s blinding, and she backs away from the men and her suit. Barnes is like a tense coil, ready to spring into action to protect Steve. Steve is a mess of emotions that are all written openly across his face and his body language, and Toni has to work _hard_ to ignore them and bury the hatchet.

“You lied to me, Rogers. You had the _audacity_ to talk to me about truth and honesty, and you lied to my _face_.” There’s so much hate bleeding through her voice that she doesn't recognize it at all. She doesn't recognize this woman she can see being reflected back at her in the glass of the deactivated screen where she just watched the last tenuous threads of her past come apart. She’s glad she doesn't. The less she feels like herself now, the less any of this is going to be mentally connected to her, rather than that dark thing that lives inside her that comes out when her family gets touched.

And it’s her _family_ that did this to her.

“I had to protect Bucky,” Steve explains. It’s a shoddy explanation. It doesn't excuse anything. It doesn't help, and everyone in the room knows this. “I wanted to protect you.”

“Protect me?!” She sounds like some possessed banshee. A dark, somewhat evil part of her likes it. “Protect me?! You _lied_ to me, Steve! I _trusted_ you! You think lying to me about knowing what happened to my parents is protecting me?! How the hell would that help anything?! You weren’t protecting me, you were protecting yourself. Talk to me about selflessness and laying down on the damn wire for your _buddies_ to crawl over you, and then turn around and pull this?!”

She’s in his face, and now, _now_ he looks apologetic, chastised, sorry. He knows that he’s lost her. It’s too little, too late, and she can almost sense Barnes behind her. “I’m sorry,” Steve says again. This time, he means it.

“No, you’re not sorry yet.” Toni’s seething, vibrating with rage, and the suit stands open, to the side, behind her but not between her and Barnes. “You’re not sorry yet, but you will be.” She steps back, almost into Barnes. “Call him _off_.” Steve looks to Barnes and nods brokenly, then looks back at her. “You’re never gonna see me face-to-face again, Rogers, and you’re happy about that. Take him and _get out of here_ , before I change my mind about whose fault that,” she gestures to the TV, “was and lose all self-control.”

She steps back three four, five steps, putting distance between him and her and trying to scrub her mind of any thought for him. Steve steps forward, and Toni pulls her knife. Barnes stands between them, and his fingers twitch, like he wants to attack her.

“You gonna kill me like you killed them?” she taunts.

He flinches _hard_. She smirks. If there's one thing Toni's been good at, other than killing people or getting them killed, it's finding someone's worst sore spot and punching it.

“If I get a choice," she continues, "take me out like Howard. I never liked helplessness.” She bares her teeth in a feral grin, one laced with all the madness and rage she’s got in her. “This is your one shot. You miss this, you’re not getting another freebie.”

“Toni, stop it!” Steve’s pleas fall on deaf ears. She lowers her chin, stares Death’s Messenger in the face, fingers flexing around the knife.

“Drag his ass out of here,” she orders through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to see either of you again unless you finish the damn job and do away with the Starks. Get. Out.”

And he does. Barnes grabs Steve and drags him out. Steve might have the serum, but Barnes is a close match, and he’s more desperate. She watches them leave, then turns back to Zemo. He’s gone. “JARVIS,” she orders in a cold voice. “Find the bastard and give me a location fix.” The cold’s starting to seep into her bones. “Take the suit and bring him back.”

It should sting that JARVIS follows the order without protest, or even a sound. It should hurt that Steve is gone and that Barnes is more honest and faithful than him, that Zemo’s probably in the wind. It should _hurt_ that once again, her father’s actions have ripped her family from her.

She can’t feel anything but the cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, y'all! Frostbite here with a quick note. I volunteer at an organization in Middle Tennessee called Saddle Up! It's a therapeutic riding program that serves kids who have both physical and mental disabilities. It is the only organization of its kind in the whole of Middle Tennessee, and it changes lives every day. Thanks to the support of so many amazing people, we were able to surpass our fundraising goal! Thank you to all of you who took the time to read these notes, even if you didn't donate. Your support is so appreciated! Happy writing and Merry Christmas!


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